Tagged: iPhone

This has nothing to do with my iPhone battery replacement, but here’s a miniature horse in the University Village Apple Store in Seattle back in 2009 — before it got too crowded for people, much less horses.

I got a new $29 battery for my iPhone yesterday, not just because I could (funny story about replacements) but because I had to. My iPhone had stopped holding a charge for longer than about six hours. I’m going to walk you through my replacement experience because you might find it informative. Also, I’m long overdue in writing an annual blog post, which means there will be a long <digression> for those of you who do not own an iPhone.

You have until the end of the year to take advantage of Apple’s offer, but it might be a good idea to act well before that, as you will see. It’s not quite as simple showing up at the Genius Bar.

My iPhone 7 was purchased in November 2016, so I’d had it for 17 months — the warranty had expired. A couple of weeks ago, the battery started depleting rapidly and I was getting 20 percent warnings that I had never seen before.

So I went to the Apple website. Among the options for battery replacement, I chose to make a Genius Bar appointment. But when I did, it showed me a small number of available times a week hence, and none of them worked for me. So I called the general support number. Turns out you need to order the battery first, and they let you know when it arrives at the nearest store. Then you leave it with them for 90 minutes while they make the change. But the woman on the phone told me it could take two to five weeks for the battery to arrive at the store. OK, I figured, I guess I’ll limp along until it arrives and be thankful I didn’t wait until the end of the year when everyone else will be trying to get their $29 batteries.

As it happened, the Apple Store called the next day and said they had the battery and I could make an appointment to get it installed. Talk about under-promising and over-delivering. I picked Saturday at 3 p.m. Continue reading →